This Monday sucker punched me, knocking the wind right from my lungs. I woke with a throbbing, swollen hand. Counting down the hours until my doctor appointment, mentally checking things off of my morning list, while I felt like someone was taking a sledgehammer to my thumb.
I shuffled my way into the kitchen for some tea. My list grew as the tea steeped. Weekends are often full and cozy and then slam. Monday arrives. She kicks butt and takes no names.
Hollering at the kids to wake up, I pulled out my makeup. Two-thirds of my offspring are mummified come morning and it's one of my most dreaded tasks: the waking of them.
I did my usual song and dance, sang to them, flipped the lights, you know, the usual. One stirred, one didn't.
I did what I often do in this case and bounced myself right down onto the bed next to her. Leaning in to breathe her adorable morning scent, I nuzzled her neck as I often do. Outside my window, the night was still hanging on, and it was at this moment that I felt it.
A quick flip of my cell phone light revealed that we didn't wash her face well enough and the green frosted cupcake grandma gave her got all over her pillow.
Wait. Hold up. Allllll. Overrrrrr. Her. Pillowwwww. And her blanket. And the bed. And...
My worst nightmare. My most dreaded ailment. All now, on the side of my face.
Puke.
Yeah, green frosted cupcake comes back, just as green as it went in.
Awesome. Throbbing thumb, swollen to a sausage, a confused and smelly little girl - one kid with a cold, and the other refusing to wake up.
I had one of those mom moments where you pause ever so briefly to ask yourself "Can this please be it? Please?" It was a pause in time where I wondered how on earth I would get through this day.
My thoughts cycled and crashed and somehow after the cupcake girl enjoyed and kept down a waffle, the other two found clean clothes, and I begged my oldest to pack lunches since I was down to one hand - we made it to the car.
Eventually when we had somehow survived school drop off, and one doctor's appointment, the girl who used to love cupcakes and the one with a stuffed up head were still in tact. Soon we found ourselves in the Radiology department.
I sat back and sighed a deep sigh, nodding at myself in approval. Wow, I thought, I am DOING this. Monday you can shove it, I whispered in my head. It was one of those brief pauses in a mother's life where she thinks to herself, hey there ma, you did it, bra-vo-to-you.
Then I saw it. How could I have missed it before? Bouncing around in front of a waiting room full of people, singing worship music to her Elsa doll, was my three-year-old. Tiny remnants of the cupcake exit still in her long blonde hair, and a green-ish hue on her face from likely sleeping in the yuck for who knows how long. A closer sniff confirmed my biggest fear: she didn't not, smell, good.
But smiling big. Oh she smiled big, smelly and all.
I forgot, to give her, a bath - I thought, horrified.
HORRIFIED. I forgot to bathe her. The poor girl was tinted green, but loving life with a gusto I have long lost.
I watched her for a bit, as the terror wore off, mentally scolding myself for being so thoughtless. I considered the night she had had, and yet here she was. Dirty, but happy.
She woke up and told Monday she was in charge. Green hair or not. That poor Monday. She gets such a bad rap.
And here I was, whining about how much I wished Monday would pack her bags and hit the road.
My girl taught me something this morning, in the middle of a Radiology department, among strangers who probably applauded the tech that pulled us to the back. She showed me a gift I'd long forgotten existed: a vigor for life, a quiet confidence, a beautiful love of simply waking for another day.
Yes, eventually I bathed her, while she giggled about the green cupcake and though the events of the rest of our day were equally as crazy as the earlier ones, I found myself smiling. I couldn't help it.
I want to reach out to all the mamas, the ones covered in their children's vomit, stuck in a radiology department, desperate to know there's a light at the end of that smelly Monday tunnel.
I want to yell, "Hey moms! There IS light! There is! But while you're in the dark, take a note from our Monday. While you're stuck there in that dark, find a flashlight and light your way to Tuesday."
I needed someone to tell me that today, so if that's where you find yourself, I simply say this to you: Warrior on moms. The tunnel ends eventually.
xo